Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy. Pumpkin carving is
Speaker 1: one of my very very favorite Halloween activities. Oh hooray.
Speaker 1: I love it like I love it, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: about that on Behind the Scenes Forever Halloween Season, Halloween Halloween.
Speaker 1: I'm excited about it. Jack o lanearns have become one
Speaker 1: of the most iconic symbols of Halloween, but their origin
Speaker 1: story is not super well documented because it's not as
Speaker 1: though someone just invented them, or even a culture invented them,
Speaker 1: or if they were part of a specific event and
Speaker 1: then became popular, although they are associated mostly with one culture.
Speaker 1: But we'll talk about all of that. So tracing their roots.
Speaker 1: I think I had told you a while back while
Speaker 1: I was working them this, I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: the shape of it because it does involve some folklore,
Speaker 1: some agriculture, there's some literary influence that all come together
Speaker 1: to sort of make the jack lantern as important visually
Speaker 1: to Halloween season as it is today. So we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about all of that now. So the history
Speaker 1: of jack lanterns starts with an Irish folk story about
Speaker 1: a man called Stingy Jack. There was a poem to
Speaker 1: tell the tale of Stingy Jack that came out in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one, written by Hercules Ellis. This was included
Speaker 1: in a book called the Rhyme Book, which collected a
Speaker 1: number of folk tales and told them in verse. The
Speaker 1: story of Stingy Jack is a lot older, though, and
Speaker 1: there are many variations. This eighteen fifty one poem opens
Speaker 1: with a rather unsavory depiction of Jack and his unkind ways,
Speaker 1: and it calls him by his more formal name of
Speaker 1: John rather than Jack. Quote greater Charle was never known
Speaker 1: on this earth than Stingy John. From his door, the
Speaker 1: poor were turned, unrelieved and cursed and spurned. But as
Speaker 1: this version of Stingy Jack's story plays out, while he
Speaker 1: is traveling home one night, Jack encounters a poor stranger
Speaker 1: who claims that they are near death, and they ask
Speaker 1: for help, and surprisingly Jack offers aid. He picks the
Speaker 1: stranger up, and he puts him on his horse and
Speaker 1: brings him to his home, where he feeds this man
Speaker 1: and gives him a place to sleep. But then the
Speaker 1: next morning, Jack awakens to find that the poor traveler
Speaker 1: that he helped was actually an angel, who says to
Speaker 1: him in the poem quote though called a churl by
Speaker 1: all around, mercy in your heart, I've found ask three gifts.
Speaker 1: I'll give them you and my blessing ad there too.
Speaker 1: After contemplating this offer, Jack asks for the following quote,
Speaker 1: I wish whoever takes my chair maybe fastened firmly there
Speaker 1: he to chair and share to ground till my leave
Speaker 1: to go be found. Next, I pray whatever fools metal
Speaker 1: with my box of tools may be fastened to the
Speaker 1: wall till to let them go I call. Thirdly, sir,
Speaker 1: I would implore that who breaks my sycamore may be
Speaker 1: fixed fast to the tree till I choose to set
Speaker 1: him free. And so the angel, sighing, grants these three wishes.
Speaker 1: But this seals Jack's fate because in not asking for
Speaker 1: heaven when offered anything by the angel and instead making
Speaker 1: wishes that are intended to trap people in his control,
Speaker 1: he has doomed himself to never enter the pearly gates.
Speaker 1: But Jack doesn't really realize that anything bad is going
Speaker 1: to happen. To him at this point, because his life
Speaker 1: goes pretty well. He's healthy, his flocks flourish, and he
Speaker 1: gets really rich. But eventually, like everyone old and his
Speaker 1: end of life nears. And because he has doomed himself
Speaker 1: to Hell with these wishes, the devil sends one of
Speaker 1: his servants up from Hell to fetch Jack. And when
Speaker 1: that servant comes to Jack's door, Jack invites him in
Speaker 1: and offers him a seat, and that seals the devil's
Speaker 1: servant to it because of that first wish. Jack then
Speaker 1: beats the servant. This is all a pretty violent story,
Speaker 1: I will say, and then makes him a deal that
Speaker 1: if he promises to never come back, he will be
Speaker 1: set free, and the servant of the devil agrees to this.
Speaker 1: Of course, the devil has other servants and sends another one,
Speaker 1: and that servant is aware of what happened to the first.
Speaker 1: This emissary is adamant that Jack has to report to Hell,
Speaker 1: and Jack says that he'll go, but he has to
Speaker 1: fix his shoes first or he won't be able to
Speaker 1: make the journey. So he asks the Devil's servant number
Speaker 1: two to hand him an all from his toolbox that,
Speaker 1: of course traps that servant. Once again, Jack beats the
Speaker 1: devil's servant and offers him freedom for the promise that
Speaker 1: he will not return. There is another uh. The third
Speaker 1: visit that Jack gets is from the devil himself, who
Speaker 1: is tired of his minions being tricked, and, according to
Speaker 1: the poem, quote said Jack, my lord, I'm ready quite
Speaker 1: but dead lame is old. Jack. You must go get
Speaker 1: me a good stout stick, or take me on your back.
Speaker 1: So the devil goes to Jack's nearby sycamore tree to
Speaker 1: get a walking stick from it, and is then fastened
Speaker 1: tight to the tree, where Jack flails him for a
Speaker 1: long time. He flails him so much that the devil's
Speaker 1: roars are heard as far away as Germany, Italy, and Spain.
Speaker 1: According to this poem, the devil is finally freed by
Speaker 1: Jack after he promises that he will never take Jack
Speaker 1: to Hell. But that means that when Jack dies, his
Speaker 1: soul has nowhere to go. So this poem concludes at length,
Speaker 1: Jack died, and when his soul was from his body riven,
Speaker 1: it could not get through Hell's wide gate, nor yet
Speaker 1: through those of Heaven. By his free choice, he lost
Speaker 1: the last and Satan did not fail his oath to
Speaker 1: keep and Jack to sweep from Hell's gates with his flail. Then,
Speaker 1: since Jack is unfit for heaven and Hell won't give
Speaker 1: him room, his ghost is forced to walk the earth
Speaker 1: until the day of Doom. A lantern in his hand,
Speaker 1: he bears the way by night to show and from
Speaker 1: its flame he got the name of Jack. A lantern. Now, so,
Speaker 1: there's a more common version of this folk tale that
Speaker 1: pre dates the poem. In that version, Jack invites the
Speaker 1: devil to drink with him at a pub, but he
Speaker 1: does not have the money to pay to cover the bill.
Speaker 1: He makes a deal with the devil, offering his soul
Speaker 1: for money. The devil agrees and turns himself into a coin.
Speaker 1: So the plan is Jack will use the coin to
Speaker 1: pay for the drinks and then the devil will return
Speaker 1: to his normal shape and leave. But Jack does not
Speaker 1: pay his bill with the devil coin. Instead, he walks
Speaker 1: out on the bill and puts the coin in his
Speaker 1: pocket along with the cross that keeps the devil from
Speaker 1: assuming his true form, and eventually Jack decides to let
Speaker 1: the devil free from this trap. For a reason that
Speaker 1: is usually determined by the teller's choosing like guilt or fear,
Speaker 1: and he makes the deal with Satan at this moment
Speaker 1: that in exchange for freedom, the devil cannot bother Jack
Speaker 1: for ten years. That seems like a foolish deal to make,
Speaker 1: but whatever. When the devil sees Jack again after that
Speaker 1: allotted period has passed, he gets tricked again. This time,
Speaker 1: Jack says he will go willingly after he has an
Speaker 1: apple from a tree that is not too far off
Speaker 1: from where this conversation is taking place, and he asks
Speaker 1: the devil if he will climb up into the tree
Speaker 1: to fetch an especially good apple. The devil obliges. Clearly,
Speaker 1: the devil is kind of a ding dong in these
Speaker 1: stories because he just gets tricked over and over. And
Speaker 1: while Satan is out this tree, Jack carves across on
Speaker 1: the trunk and that prevents the devil from getting down
Speaker 1: once again. Jack frees the devil this time makes a
Speaker 1: deal that his soul cannot be taken to Hell when
Speaker 1: he dies. The devil agrees and his freed, and both
Speaker 1: of them just go about their business until Jack does
Speaker 1: finally die of old age. At that point, he's refused
Speaker 1: entry into heaven and sent by Saint Peter to Hell,
Speaker 1: but the devil can't take him either per their previous arrangement,
Speaker 1: so instead he gives Jack a small flame from the
Speaker 1: fires of Hell. Jack puts the flame into a carved
Speaker 1: out turnip to use as a lamp, and because his
Speaker 1: soul can't go to heaven or Hell, he just wanders
Speaker 1: the earth until Judgment Day with this little turnip light. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes that's described as a flame, sometimes as a burning
Speaker 1: charcoal from the fires of Hell, or a spark. It
Speaker 1: comes up a little bit differently, but no matter the details.
Speaker 1: The story of Stinjack in his lantern is really not
Speaker 1: connected to Halloween initially, but was a way to explain
Speaker 1: the idea of floating lights that people saw at night,
Speaker 1: the same thing you may have heard called will of
Speaker 1: the Wisp or some other thing. So those floating lights
Speaker 1: associated with bogs are said to lower travelers off course
Speaker 1: and to their doom. They are described as being perpetually
Speaker 1: out of reach, so as a person approaches, they seem
Speaker 1: to move away, and there is a scientific explanation for
Speaker 1: this phenomenon. They're a couple, actually, So it's believed that
Speaker 1: marsh gas, which is high in methane, sometimes produces light
Speaker 1: as the flora around it decomposes and creates a chemical reaction.
Speaker 1: That's a process called chemoluminescence. The other explainer is bioluminescence,
Speaker 1: which happens when a chemical reaction produces light in living
Speaker 1: organisms and is not a decomposition thing. But before that
Speaker 1: science was understood, the various myths and lore were used
Speaker 1: to explain those boglines and other cultures have completely different
Speaker 1: explanations for this phenomenon. But this Irish folk tale is
Speaker 1: the one that gives rise to the Jack o' lantern.
Speaker 1: This also reminds me of the make a Light which
Speaker 1: we just talked about. Yes, uh so, how did this
Speaker 1: tale of the doomed, untethered soul of Stingy Jack lead
Speaker 1: to kids carrying plastic pumpkins around during trick or treat time.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the history of the pumpkin
Speaker 1: before we get to that, and we will do that
Speaker 1: after a sponsor break. Pumpkins are native to North and
Speaker 1: Central America. In the book Pumpkin, The Curious History of
Speaker 1: an American Icon, author Cindy Ott makes the case that
Speaker 1: the pumpkin may have been the first plant that was
Speaker 1: transitioned from wild to cultivated by people living in the Americas,
Speaker 1: making them a keystone of the transition to agricultural versus
Speaker 1: foraging society. The oldest cultivated pumpkin seeds we know of
Speaker 1: came from the Wahaca Highlands in Mexico, and they're somewhere
Speaker 1: between eight and ten thousand years old. That, according to Ott,
Speaker 1: makes them two thousand years older than any known corn
Speaker 1: or bean seeds. But those early pumpkins were nothing like
Speaker 1: the behemoths you can find today at a supermarket. They
Speaker 1: were small, their range was pretty close to a modern
Speaker 1: regulation baseball or a softball in range. The reasons that
Speaker 1: pumpkins became so popular among early American cultures is one
Speaker 1: that's debated. They would not have been the very fleshy,
Speaker 1: sweet version that we have today, but a lot more
Speaker 1: bitter with a thinner wall of flesh until they were
Speaker 1: selectively bred for having a bigger size and sweeter flavor.
Speaker 1: But they were consistent and reliable as a crop. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons that sprouting punkumpkin seeds as a popular
Speaker 1: classroom activity today is because it is really easy to do.
Speaker 1: Pumpkins grow quickly, and they would have added variety to
Speaker 1: the diet of early agrarian groups. Yeah, if you're like
Speaker 1: me and you dump all your stuff in your composter
Speaker 1: without a whole lot of thoughts, sometimes you get surprise
Speaker 1: gift pumpkin vines. They're just so easy to grow, they
Speaker 1: just want to sprout. By the twelve hundred's, indigenous peoples
Speaker 1: on the eastern seaboard of North America had a really
Speaker 1: established practice of growing pumpkins, and they had been standard
Speaker 1: crops even earlier than that in other areas of the continent,
Speaker 1: so well before Europeans made their way across the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: the pumpkin was pretty plentiful. Exact varieties and specific timelines
Speaker 1: of them are really difficult to trace because those things
Speaker 1: were shifting year to year as sweeter versions were sought
Speaker 1: out for eating, and other members of the Kukubatacea family
Speaker 1: were cultivated for other uses, for example, gourds that could
Speaker 1: be hollowed out and used as vessels, and these were
Speaker 1: grown alongside corn and beans in what is known today
Speaker 1: as the Three Sisters method of planting. It's also called
Speaker 1: companion planting, and in this arrangement, the corn serves as
Speaker 1: a trellis for the beans to grow up the beans,
Speaker 1: stabilize the corn, and add nitrogen to the soil, which
Speaker 1: helps support the pumpkins and the corn, and the pumpkins
Speaker 1: or their close relatives, because it's not always a pumpkin,
Speaker 1: protect the soil and roots of the other plants while
Speaker 1: suppressing weed growth. Pumpkins are a good source of vitamin A,
Speaker 1: with potassium, iron, and vitamin C also included in their
Speaker 1: nutritional profile, so their benefits make it pretty clear why
Speaker 1: they became an important part of early North American agriculture.
Speaker 1: The word pumpkin doesn't come from the languages of these
Speaker 1: indigenous peoples, though. Field pumpkins, like the big orange ones
Speaker 1: that are so closely associated with autumn and its holidays.
Speaker 1: Those were grouped with a lot of other varieties of
Speaker 1: crops under the name squash. That word, according to the
Speaker 1: Library of Congress, as from the word a scuta squash,
Speaker 1: which is a Narragansett word referring to something that's eaten raw.
Speaker 1: The word pumpkin has roots in the Greek word pepin,
Speaker 1: which means large melon. I feel like I said that
Speaker 1: as though it were French. When this was adopted into French,
Speaker 1: that word was transitioned to Pompon, and then that became
Speaker 1: Pumpion and Great Britain before evolving into Pumpkin. So when
Speaker 1: Europeans came to North America, they eventually adopted the pumpkin
Speaker 1: into their own diet as a staple food for all
Speaker 1: of the reasons it had already been popular with indigenous peoples.
Speaker 1: In addition to the benefits we've already mentioned, there is
Speaker 1: the bonus that pumpkins can be used just about in
Speaker 1: their entirety right. You can roast and eat the seeds,
Speaker 1: the blossoms can be eaten, the skins can be eaten.
Speaker 1: You can so treat the skins for other uses like weaving.
Speaker 1: So clearly it's a great crop. So now that the
Speaker 1: pumpkins place in North American agriculture is established, we're gonna
Speaker 1: jump back to the story of Stingy Jack. Because Jack's spirit,
Speaker 1: wandering the world, unable to enter heaven or hell, carried
Speaker 1: a turn up lantern. Became known as Jack of the
Speaker 1: Lantern or Jack o lantern, But he wasn't the only
Speaker 1: one called that name. The term jack lantern was also
Speaker 1: used to describe night watchmen who carried lanterns as they
Speaker 1: patrolled their areas. The use of the name jack o'
Speaker 1: lanterns interchangeably with will of the wisp or other names
Speaker 1: to describe that eerie and uncatchable light we talked about,
Speaker 1: was well established by the late eighteenth century. I found
Speaker 1: it very easy to find numerous newspaper articles that reference
Speaker 1: them by the jack lantern name. One appearing in the
Speaker 1: Bath Journal in October seventeen seventy nine, is about I
Speaker 1: writ Paul Jones, and it states, quote Paul Jones resembles
Speaker 1: a jack o' lantern to mislead our mariners and terrify
Speaker 1: our coasts. He is no sooner seen than lost. Another
Speaker 1: printed in February seventeen ninety two in the Freeman's Journal
Speaker 1: or the North American Intelligencer, included a criticism of the
Speaker 1: French nobility, which read, in part quote, Unfortunately, in their
Speaker 1: search of light, they turn their backs upon the steady
Speaker 1: luminary reason and follow certain jacka lanterns that lead them astray. Accordingly,
Speaker 1: they have lost themselves in the public opinion. One article
Speaker 1: that appeared in the Portland Gazette in September of seventeen
Speaker 1: ninety eight begins as though it's an etymology of the
Speaker 1: word jacobin, suggesting that the final syllable was really lynn,
Speaker 1: which was an evolution from land as an abbreviation of lantern,
Speaker 1: and that jacobin and jack o lantern are the same word.
Speaker 1: This is, in actuality, a criticism of the Jacobins, comparing
Speaker 1: them to a thing that seems appealing but is in
Speaker 1: fact not. The article includes a list of characteristics of
Speaker 1: the jackalantern and concludes with quote to all appearances, it
Speaker 1: is an angel of light, but in reality it is
Speaker 1: an angel of darkness. In short, it is the very
Speaker 1: devil all over. And so my good reader is the Jacobin.
Speaker 1: So the idea of a jack lantern was well established
Speaker 1: before that eighteen fifty one poem that we mentioned in
Speaker 1: the first segment of the show, and some versions of
Speaker 1: the Stingy Jack story also account for the idea that
Speaker 1: other people started carving their own turnips and potatoes to
Speaker 1: have scary faces, and they put these creatures in their
Speaker 1: windows to scare off the wandering Jack or any other creature.
Speaker 1: This actually becomes a little bit confusing because it appears
Speaker 1: that they're in telling this story there has been a
Speaker 1: co mingling of two ideas. So the explainer of the
Speaker 1: Boglin light known as Ignus Thoughtuus or fools Fire that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, and the Celtic Sawen celebration. Sawen,
Speaker 1: which means end of Summer, was a festival that marked
Speaker 1: the transition to autumn. This was also the Celtic New
Speaker 1: Year and was associated not just with the changing of
Speaker 1: the seasons, but also with death and rebirth. The end
Speaker 1: of harvest and the preparation for winter has come to
Speaker 1: be associated with a lot of concepts, and some of
Speaker 1: them are on the spooky and scary side. Although we
Speaker 1: don't really have a lot of reliable information about the
Speaker 1: actual historical practices, it's believed that the Celtic festival, which
Speaker 1: marked the delineation between the light and dark parts of
Speaker 1: the year, also marked a time when the living and
Speaker 1: the dead might have contact. There may have been a
Speaker 1: time when the world of the supernatural and of deities
Speaker 1: was believed to be accessible or at least visible to
Speaker 1: mortal humans. So, based on what we know they're there
Speaker 1: are some pretty easy to recognize similarities between historical Swen
Speaker 1: activities and modern Halloween, including dressing up in costume. So
Speaker 1: while today's costume party might be about finding the funniest
Speaker 1: or most impressive ensemble. The participants in Sooyen were more
Speaker 1: likely selecting disguises to confuse evil spirits. Bonfires are also
Speaker 1: believed to have been a common practice as a way
Speaker 1: to protect the gathered celebrants, and fortune telling may have
Speaker 1: been part of the festivities because this was a time
Speaker 1: of looking to the year ahead. After the Romans defeated
Speaker 1: the Celts in the first century, Celtic paganism was subsumed
Speaker 1: into Christian ideology through a careful rewrite of the narrative
Speaker 1: of the meanings of various practices, kind of along the
Speaker 1: lines of oh, no, no, no, that thing you've always
Speaker 1: done has actually been a Christian thing all along. This
Speaker 1: was especially the case when All Saints Day was declared
Speaker 1: in the year six o nine, and then it was
Speaker 1: handily moved a couple centuries later to coincide with sawm
Speaker 1: And this is when the day before All Saints' Day,
Speaker 1: known as All Hollows Eve, started to develop the identity
Speaker 1: that we would come to recognize as the holiday of Halloween.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we'll talk about how this braiding together of
Speaker 1: folklore and holidays led to the jack lantern being a
Speaker 1: symbol of the season. We'll do that right after we
Speaker 1: hear from some sponsors that keep the show going. So
Speaker 1: all of this talk of stingy jack of pumpkin crops
Speaker 1: and sawn brings us back to jack lanterns. There are
Speaker 1: historians who believe that vegetables may have been carved to
Speaker 1: look like heads as part of the Celtic celebration, and
Speaker 1: the Celts of the pre Roman era did have a
Speaker 1: lot of mythology about the importance of the head, and
Speaker 1: these carvings may have represented the heads of vanquished enemies,
Speaker 1: but that is just theory. But a completely different explanation
Speaker 1: is that people used root vegetable lanterns for sawn because
Speaker 1: they were going around their villages searching for libations, that
Speaker 1: was another part of the celebration, and they just needed lights.
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily symbolic, and that simple need may have
Speaker 1: evolved into the lanterns carved to have faces on them.
Speaker 1: Whether that was the case or not, we do know
Speaker 1: that carving turnips and potatoes with faces and putting a
Speaker 1: candle inside had become a common practice in Ireland by
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, and it does make some sense that
Speaker 1: the story that explained the strange Marsh lights and the
Speaker 1: traditions of Sawyn had become intertwined because both of those
Speaker 1: stories are tied together geographically. So by the time Irish
Speaker 1: immigrants made their way to North America starting in the
Speaker 1: early eighteenth century, they brought this vegetable carving tradition, which
Speaker 1: had already been part of the autumn celebrations with them,
Speaker 1: and then they discovered that the pumpkins that were plentiful
Speaker 1: in their new home were a lot easier to carve
Speaker 1: than the other vegetables and were more plentiful as well.
Speaker 1: Before long, pumpkins carved into lanterns with faces were common
Speaker 1: in the autumn, and not just in Irish homes. One
Speaker 1: of the cultural moments that helped make jack O'Lanterns popular
Speaker 1: in the US did not actually feature any jack o lanterns.
Speaker 1: That was the eighteen twenty publication of the Legend of
Speaker 1: Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. So if you're thinking of
Speaker 1: that story and spoiler alert if you have somehow managed
Speaker 1: to never read it or see an adaptation of it,
Speaker 1: you may recall the headless horseman throwing a jack o'
Speaker 1: lantern at Ichabod Crane near the end of the book,
Speaker 1: but Irving never wrote that it was a jack lantern,
Speaker 1: just a pumpkin. The moment where Ikabad is attacked culminates
Speaker 1: in this excerpt quote, Just then he saw the goblin
Speaker 1: rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of
Speaker 1: hurling his head at him, Ikabod endeavored to dodge the
Speaker 1: horrible missile, but too late it encountered his cranium with
Speaker 1: a tremendous crash. He was tumbled headlong into the dust,
Speaker 1: and gunpowdered the black steed, and the goblin writer passed
Speaker 1: by like a whirlwind. And then at the end of
Speaker 1: the next paragraph quote, on the bank of a broad
Speaker 1: part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black,
Speaker 1: was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close
Speaker 1: behind it a shattered pumpkin. Just a pumpkin, not a
Speaker 1: jack lantern. But illustrations of that scene have almost always
Speaker 1: included a pumpkin with a face carved into it, starting
Speaker 1: very shortly after it was published, and that helps cement
Speaker 1: the idea that jack lanterns had been an integral part
Speaker 1: of white European culture in North America from just about
Speaker 1: the very beginning and a jack o' lantern was explicitly
Speaker 1: mentioned fifteen years later and the text of Nathaniel Hawthorne's
Speaker 1: The Great Carbuncle. The titular carbuncle is a gem that
Speaker 1: a band of adventurers are just dicussing what to do with.
Speaker 1: One of the character's plans to conceal it under his clothes,
Speaker 1: and another replies, hide it under thy cloak, sayest thou
Speaker 1: why it will gleam through the holes and make thee
Speaker 1: look like a jack o lantern. It's unclear whether this
Speaker 1: reference means the carved pumpkin or the glimmering lights over
Speaker 1: a marsh. Hawthorne also describes a pumpkin jack of lantern,
Speaker 1: but doesn't use that phrase. In his eighteen fifty two
Speaker 1: story Feathertop, the character Feathertop is a scarecrow with a
Speaker 1: carved pumpkin for a head, and he comes to life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I favor the side that it in the carbuncle he
Speaker 1: means a carved pumpkin jack lantern, but it's up for
Speaker 1: debate from there. The jack of lantern started making appearances
Speaker 1: throughout poetry, stories, and art. In the United States. You
Speaker 1: can find it on woodblock prints starting in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and it was frequently seen on magazine covers
Speaker 1: during Halloween season by the nineteen twenties. By the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: his trigger treating became part of the standard Halloween fun.
Speaker 1: Jack lanterns were considered an essential part of the festivities,
Speaker 1: so much so that an article in the Honolulu Advertiser
Speaker 1: from October thirty first, nineteen thirty one, appeared with the
Speaker 1: headline Whyalua children use papayas for pumpkins to scare on Halloween.
Speaker 1: This article explains it because Honolulu did not have pumpkins,
Speaker 1: they still had to have jacka lanterns, and so they
Speaker 1: used papayas. This write up includes several stories of kids
Speaker 1: using them to scare people, including one where a kid
Speaker 1: hid in a hibiscus bush with his papaya jack a
Speaker 1: lantern and scared passers by with it. Early trigger treaders
Speaker 1: used jack o lanterns to light their way as they
Speaker 1: walked the neighborhood's streets for their candy halls. This meant
Speaker 1: that the lantern was just that it was a light source,
Speaker 1: not a candy receptacle. Often these are made of materials
Speaker 1: like paper mache instead of actual pumpkins to make them
Speaker 1: easier to carry. These transitioned away from candles as the
Speaker 1: light to simple batteries with bulbs as safety concerns arose,
Speaker 1: and by the nineteen fifties plastic battery powered pumpkin lanterns
Speaker 1: started to appear. Over time, the plastic jack lantern transitioned
Speaker 1: from guiding light to candy receptacle. In nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: the Quad City Times of Davenport, Iowa suggested a series
Speaker 1: of party ideas that one might stage for Halloween, all
Speaker 1: of which included one or more jack lanterns as decor.
Speaker 1: One was an apple and nut party for teenagers. Feel
Speaker 1: like if you pitch that today you might get some shrugs,
Speaker 1: and another was a jack lantern supper that included sandwiches
Speaker 1: made with bread cut to look like jack lanterns. A
Speaker 1: look through almost any town's papers around Halloween season from
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century on shows loads of similar articles,
Speaker 1: although I never found a single one that mentioned stingy
Speaker 1: jack or warding away evil spirits. It was all just
Speaker 1: in fun. Today, of course, you can buy plastic jack
Speaker 1: lanterns and all kinds of colors and realistic looking fake
Speaker 1: pumpkins for carving or already carved. Real pumpkins remain an
Speaker 1: important part of US agriculture. In twenty twenty and estimated
Speaker 1: one point five billion pounds of pumpkins were grown in
Speaker 1: the US. Illinois has long been the country's top producer,
Speaker 1: with Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Michigan, California, Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and Virginia as the other big pumpkins states. And if
Speaker 1: you want to carve a real pumpkin but you're not
Speaker 1: that confident about it, you can also buy all kinds
Speaker 1: of special pumpkin carving tools and kits to get that
Speaker 1: job done. And now the jack of lantern is everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I'm a happy little ghoul. I have two pieces
Speaker 1: of listener mail and they're both brief, which is why
Speaker 1: I'm including two, and they feature apples, so that seems
Speaker 1: still in our autumnal zone. The first is from our listener, Tabitha,
Speaker 1: and it is titled Honey Fungus Hunting. Tabitha writes, Hello,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to share that I was listening to
Speaker 1: your podcast about the Bramley apple tree being infected by
Speaker 1: honey fungus right as I was out hunting for honey
Speaker 1: mushrooms because they are edible. I am a certified wild
Speaker 1: mushroom forager, and I teach people how to safely id
Speaker 1: and eat the honey fungus and how it does infect trees.
Speaker 1: Your podcast is my favorite. Thank you for all that
Speaker 1: you both do. Thank you for that because I had
Speaker 1: not seen in any of my research on the tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could eat those. I will say, please do not
Speaker 1: go eat some mushrooms from near a tree based on
Speaker 1: this audio description. You need someone like Tabitha to guide
Speaker 1: you who has done all of the training and research. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Any mushroom identification requires like several different not just oh
Speaker 1: this is growing near the tree and is honeycolored. That
Speaker 1: is bad enough. There are some honey color mushrooms that
Speaker 1: grow near trees that can kill you. So yeah, don't
Speaker 1: do that, don't. I'm terrified of wild mushrooms. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: unless they have been gathered by someone lake that is
Speaker 1: at a farmer's market that I know is certified. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I follow some foragers on TikTok whose work I really enjoy.
Speaker 1: But I also we grew a lot of things in
Speaker 1: a garden growing up, but my mother was very clear
Speaker 1: on the direction that we were not to eat anything
Speaker 1: we found in the wild because we would immediately die,
Speaker 1: which is an overly conservative look at things that grow
Speaker 1: in the wild. But like all of the foragers that
Speaker 1: I watch are super like, you have to do these
Speaker 1: multiple things you cannot just look at like the color
Speaker 1: of the mushroom or whatever. Yeah, I kind of I'm
Speaker 1: with your mom. That's a better safe than sorry when
Speaker 1: it comes to kids who maybe don't always exhibit a
Speaker 1: plus judgment. Sure, I know I didn't. My other email
Speaker 1: cost from our listener, Becky, who writes, Dear Holly and Tracy,
Speaker 1: your latest eponymous foods episode on the Macintosh and Bramley
Speaker 1: Apples gave me a craving for apple pie. Of course
Speaker 1: that calls for a trip to the orchard. As I
Speaker 1: wanted to make both pie and apple salad, and remembering
Speaker 1: the episode, I put the Macintosh apples down and bought
Speaker 1: Cartland's so far too delicious apple pies. The best part
Speaker 1: of a visit to our local orchard is apple cider
Speaker 1: slushes with caramel syrup. Incredible. That sounds amazing. Here is
Speaker 1: a photo of our rescue pup, Rocky, wearing a hoodie.
Speaker 1: Yes I heard the end of the Anne Radcliffe episode
Speaker 1: and clothing on animals. Rocky is not a fan. Rocky
Speaker 1: is so precious, so precious. And then Becky mentions that
Speaker 1: she met both of us in the before times at
Speaker 1: the live show in Indianapolis, which hopefully we'll do again
Speaker 1: sometimes soonish Matya is so cute. I want to kiss
Speaker 1: that face seven thousand times, like he just has one
Speaker 1: of those faces. Thank you for writing us, both Tabitha
Speaker 1: and Becky. We hope anybody that's enjoying pumpkin or appley
Speaker 1: or anything autumnal yummy right now is having the very
Speaker 1: best time of it. You can write to us at
Speaker 1: History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us
Speaker 1: on social media as Missed in History, and if you
Speaker 1: haven't subscribed yet, you can go ahead and do that
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.